Hey everyone. I loved Not created equally in EW and in fact, I actually didn't buy XCom2 until this mod got released (i followed EladDv status updates over at the nexusmods boards). Not only is this mod great and works flawlessly, you can even edit it to your liking. Just open the XComSecondWave.ini file in your \steamapps\workshop\content\268500\622475105\Config folder, and edit away! But be careful, balancing these values is actually harder than it looks (and probably needs extensive testing or simulations if you are no math genius). It's very easy to create a .ini, that leads to unbalanced results.

So why did i create this discussion? I wrote a small amateurish javascript code snippet that lets me simulate, what stats soldiers get with any given ini. Here are some of my findings, after generating 10000 soldiers with the default values of the mod:

• about 40% of all rookies have above 64 aim
  
• about 4% of all rookies have aim>69 & mobility>12 (these are usually the most desired rookies)
  
• about 15% of all rookies have aim<60 & mobility<12 (these suck, although they may have other desirable stats like high hp etc.)

So on the first glance, the mod actually makes the game harder, since there are more rookies with below average aim, than ones with above average aim. Additionally there are many really bad ones but comparatively few rookies with well rolled stats. But one has to consider, that rookies can now roll stats, they dont have acces to in Vanilla Xcom 2. These stats are: higher flanking crit chance, Defense>0, Dodge>0 (min dodge is actually 5 in the default settings), and armor mitigation>0. All in all the on average worse aim of rookies is probably counterbalanced by these stats.

However I myself prefer a balancing that is nearer to XCom:EW Vanilla NCE. After countless simulations and playtesting i came up with my own version of the .ini file that i now feel confident enough to publish. My main goals were:

• create more variance between rookies to create a style of NCE that is nearer to the XCOM:EW experience without being imbalanced (EW tends to be easier with NCE activated, because rookies are cheap so you can screen extensively)
  
• have slightly more "really good" rookies and less "really bad ones"
  
• diminish the effect of newly introduced stats that are potentially gamebreaking, especially in the lategame (dodge, armor mitigation!, flanking crits)
  
• i also am not fond of variable stats, that are not displayed ingame. I want to make educated tactical decisions, but I cannot do so if I dont know, that my rookie has for example higher than normal flanking crit chance

Therefore i removed armor mitigation (hard to balance) and higher than normal flanking crit chance. I also toned down defense and dodge. I do find the occasional lucky grazed shot exciting, but i dont want it to occur too often. I reintroduced the stat ranges of EW for the following stats: mobility, Offense, Will. There are some more smaller changes which you can read below. Here are my values:

HP_HIGH=5
HP_LOW=4
HP_COST=6
Offense_HIGH=80
Offense_LOW=50
Offense_COST=2
Defense_HIGH=4
Defense_LOW=0
Defense_COST=2
Mobility_HIGH=14
Mobility_LOW=10
Mobility_COST=7
Will_HIGH=55
Will_LOW=25
Will_COST=1
Hacking_HIGH=10
Hacking_LOW=0
Hacking_COST=0
Dodge_HIGH=4
Dodge_LOW=0
Dodge_COST=2
ArmorMitigation_HIGH=0
ArmorMitigation_LOW=0
ArmorMitigation_COST=15
SightRadius_high=27
SightRadius_low=27
SightRadius_Cost=0
FlankCrit_high=40
FlankCrit_low=40
FlankCrit_Cost=0

TOTALPOINTS=66 ; Total Points allocated to stats.
TOLERANCE=24

Some stats from simulations i did with these values:

• about 47% of all rookies have above 64 aim
  
• about 4.6% of all rookies have aim>69 & mobility>12 (these are usually the most desired rookies)
  
• about 7.7% of all rookies have aim<60 & mobility<12 (these suck)

The mod is balanced for commander and legendary difficulty. Lower difficulties would need slight alterations because rookies have higher HP.

As you can see these value are very balanced. Rookies are on average still slightly worse than vanilla Rookies, but they do get some other small benefits to compensate (dodge, Defense, possibly higher hp). I do have to say, that NCE in general works even better in XCOM 2, than in EW, because especially in the early stages of the game, you eventually have to use all your soldiers. And its great, when you actually make a Sniper with 52 aim and 12 mobility work (focussed this one on pistols). This may not hold true for difficulties below legendary, but i have no experience with these.

Wow this was longer than i expected it to be. Feel free to use my values, if you want. But keep in mind: as long as you are subscribed to the mod, everytime it updates, the ini resets to its default values. So save the values and check the ini every time before you start the game. Also, if you did some ini editing yourself i would like to read your take on balancing the values.